[AutumnBison (OP)]

55 million years ago, the world was literally a jungle. With such high temperatures, rainfall and humidity, life could proliferate. But 49 million years ago, something drastic happened: The Azolla Event, where ice was forming at the poles. The culprit? A kind of plant called Azolla. Within 800,000 years, photosynthesis and carbon sequestration from those plants reduced the atmospheric quantity of carbon dioxide from 3500 parts per million to 650.


But the real question here is--did the cooling caused by the Azolla Event create a major extinction event of plant and animal species?